A man with the focussed air of a professional watcher appeared through the crowd. He was dressed in a smart lounge suit, but to expert eyes there was no mistaking his profession. He threw Palmer a brief look, clicked through his mental slides of okay faces, then carried on scanning the people around him before turning to nod to a new arrival in a black Jaguar. The male passenger climbed out and Riley recognised the familiar, burly figure of the Defence Secretary.
‘Is that who I think it is?’ she said, as the man was ushered inside by the minder.
‘Friend of the family,’ murmured Palmer. ‘Let’s hope he doesn’t come to regret today’s visit.’
They trawled the crowd, picking out a scattering of other public faces. Two peers and couple of back-benchers moved by in easy familiarity; a middle-ranking female opera singer swished past with a party of admirers; an eagle-eyed entrepreneur who had graced the pages of the tabloids the week before was trying hard to be ignored, while two cat-walk models glided past with the grace of gazelles among wildebeest, displaying the hauteur of their trade. A few obviously foreign guests wandered around like confused minnows, no doubt trying to come to grips with the eccentricities of British etiquette and quickly losing the plot.
In between the chatter, the crunch of cars arriving on the gravelled drive continued, interspersed with the thud of doors slamming and cries of greeting. The vehicles were beginning to stack two deep along the drive, some driven onto the grass verge with their noses into the shrubbery. A couple of local youths were trying to maintain order out of this chaos, but whatever system might have been planned beforehand, it was already beginning to break down under the sheer volume of numbers and the exuberance of the occasion.
‘We’d better split up,’ Palmer told her. ‘It won’t make much difference in this crowd, but one of us might spot something. Keep your radio handy.’ He nodded away from the house. ‘You do the gardens. I’ll check the inside.’
Riley walked around the house and through the shrubbery, then drifted towards a collection of brick buildings set back among the trees. The noise dropped appreciably as she walked towards them, and she realised with a sudden chill that she wouldn’t have to go far before she was completely alone.
In the fading light, she could just make out some wooden ventilation boxes sitting on the roofs of the buildings, and closer examination revealed she was approaching some stables. From what Palmer had said, Keagan’s men had checked these out already, but that was probably two days ago. A cobbled path led all the way from the house and ended in a small yard around which the buildings were set in an open square. She couldn’t hear the sound of horses stamping and snuffling, nor any of the associated noises to be found in busy stables. A couple of bulkhead lights shone weakly from high on the walls, revealing the yard to be empty and clean, although dotted with sprouting weeds and coarse grass.
If there had been horses here, she reflected, it must have been a while ago.
The stalls along one side of the open square held an assortment of implements and riding gear. None of it looked clean or fresh and everything was covered in a fine layer of dust. The stalls on the opposite side were also empty save for a scattering of straw and some old, damaged furniture. Over everything hung the dull tang of stale horse manure, and the soft cooing of doves in the rafters added to the sense of rural peacefulness.
She turned to the block in the centre. There were no stable doors to this one, just a single door at one end with a low watt bulb burning in a wrought-iron holder overhead.
The door opened to emit a mixed aroma of stale cigarette smoke, cooking and bodies. Riley reached along the wall near the door and flicked on the light. She was in a small, high-ceilinged anteroom furnished with wooden lockers, a table and chairs. High windows looked out onto a stretch of trees at the rear. She opened a couple of the locker doors, but other than a film of dust and the odd clump of dried mud, they were empty. The whole room had an empty feel of desolation and lack of care, like a small-town railway station waiting room.
Against the rear window wall was a single sink and drainer, with a battered microwave oven standing on one end. Its glass door was open, and the inside was stained with baked-on food remnants. The air around it smelled spicy and peppery.
A cupboard under the sink held a bottle of detergent and a selection of mismatched crockery, chipped and stained with use. The air in the cupboard smelled of damp, and the wall at the back was covered in a dark bloom.
The room had obviously been converted from something else — possibly a tack room, Riley guessed — and turned into a makeshift staff kitchen. The walls had been splashed with white paint but the slabbed floor remained uncarpeted and cold. High on the wall to one side of the sink were two hefty metal brackets, which had probably once held shelves for tackle or other equipment. A metal waste-bin against one wall had been used as an ashtray and the one window was over-painted and firmly shut. With no attempt at creature comforts, it smacked of the purely temporary.
Riley emerged into a corridor that ran the full length of the block, with a number of doors leading off to the rear of the building and two small windows facing out onto the central square. The first door opened with a protesting squeak, the wood swollen in the damp air. The room was simple, about ten feet square, plain and as homely as a coal bunker, with a single bed and one hard-backed chair. A small bedside cabinet was scarred along the front edge by cigarette burns, and any varnish on the top had long been eradicated by the ring-stains of hot mugs and wet glasses. Cheap wire coat hangers bunched along a wooden architrave served as a wardrobe. It could almost have been a prison cell, she thought, and shivered at the thought.
The other rooms were identical. None showed signs of current use, but other than a thin layer of dust, bore the same lingering odour of someone having been here recently. The grooms? Or temporary lodgings for some other reason?
As she turned to leave the last room, Riley spotted a small square of printed paper, lying wedged under the edge of the the door. She pulled it out and smoothed it flat.
It was a torn scrap from a magazine. The typeface was rough, the paper quality poor. The illustration showed part of a naked breast, the aureole tanned and pimpled with goosebumps. The text alongside mentioned the name Licia in bold print and was peppered with vivid exclamation marks. No doubt, Riley assumed, the thinking man’s Michelin Guide indicator to soft porn. Unfortunately, whatever the editor was trying to convey about Licia’s finer attributes was a mystery to her, as the text was all in Spanish.
As Riley slipped the piece of paper into her pocket, she heard a noise from the far end of the corridor.
Somebody had just entered the anteroom.
**********
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Riley waited, but there was no further sound above the drumming in her ears. With a rising sense of panic, she realised there was no other way out of here; she was going to have to walk back the way she had come in.
She felt the shape of the radio in her pocket and debated calling Palmer. But that would take him away from what he was doing. Besides, what would he say if it turned out to be an inquisitive guest or a member of the catering staff sneaking away for a cigarette break?
She took a deep breath and retraced her steps along the corridor, her footsteps unnaturally loud in the enclosed space. As she passed each door, she glanced in, but the rooms were empty. As she reached the anteroom, she saw a bulky shadow thrown across the floor.
Rockface.
He looked as welcoming as a fridge-freezer and Riley wondered what he was doing here.
‘I thought you were Palmer,’ she said coolly.